The deployment of fiber to the home (FTTH) service is occurring at an increasingly rapid pace around the world, as service providers rush to offer greater bandwidth to customers. Installed cost is a significant concern for such service providers. Link loss is the insertion loss of the fiber span between an optical line terminal at a central office and the optical network unit at the subscriber dwelling. Additional connectors or splices are needed at the transition between cable types, and may be necessary when passing from outdoors (i.e. outside of a dwelling) to indoors (i.e. inside of a dwelling). Alternatively, a drop cable can be routed indoors within a conduit for a segment of the length, transitioned to a smaller cable with a splice or connection point, and then routed on the surface of the wall for the remaining segment. Each of these types of terminations adds to link loss, and further adds to the link budget, degrading performance and adding to electronics cost necessary for installation.
Installers often have to drill large holes to pass a connector end of a pre-terminated drop cable through a dwelling wall. Cable penetration solutions have been in existence for a long time. However, as cables evolve, especially fiber optic cables with pre-terminated connectors, the need for more sophistication in the penetration solutions is necessary to enable access without damaging delicate components. Further, conventional cable penetration solutions can require tools to either apply, and/or remove the protective covering from the cable once a penetration has been made. Examples of cable penetration solutions include a push rod and a pull sock, available from companies such as Jonard Tools (Tuckahoe, N.Y.). Each of these solutions have features directed to a particular type of cable installation. A push rod is stiff and has enough beam strength to be held in a cantilever fashion and inserted through a penetration hole and while it can be somewhat flexible (such as a fiberglass rod), push rods are not generally flexible enough to be pulled through a tight conduit with small radius bends. Conversely, a pull sock is generally quite flexible, with the intent of being pulled through tight conduit with a string connected to the pull sock by an eyelet at the front end of the pull sock. Because flexibility in all axes is needed, the pull sock does not have the beam strength required to be pushed through a long narrow opening (i.e. a penetration hole through a wall). The installer may not know what environment they will encounter when installing cables in end user premises.
Additionally, appearance of the installed product inside of the dwelling is a key concern for homeowners and landlords. Poorly routed and stapled cables detract from a property's value. The size of the cable which is exposed to the tenant if surface mounted can detract from the decor of the room. Further, installing fiber to the home is a disruption to the homeowner's space. It is critical for an installer to be able to quickly complete an installation with minimal noise, drilling, dust or other intrusions.
The presently described invention addresses all of the concerns discussed above, limiting link loss and budget, avoiding the necessity of large holes to route a drop cable into a dwelling, providing an aesthetically pleasing solution, and minimizing disruption to a homeowner during installation.